PBS Feeds

[rvc]

Yep its down.

[Jean0987654321]

You can always set a memory limit. Usually, that aliates that issue

[chDVRuser]

Someone reported it to @miibeez

PBS 404 error (#5) · Issues · Millie / vlc-bridge-pbs · GitLab

[rvc]

all working now

[GTFan]

Yep, can confirm that Millie's update fixed it again. I guess in the future I'll just open a bug report at her site in addition to reporting it here. She's been awesome at fixes once she gets notified.

[rpaulmerrell]

Thanks for letting the dev know if the issue with the PBS app.

[rvc]

One of my local PBS channels does not follow the national programming schedule, but for some reason the DVR always lists the national schedule for them and not the schedule they publish on their website. The mapping is correct in Channels and so is the location. Any ideas?

[Jean0987654321]

Theres not much any of the devs here could do. You'll have to contact gracenote for stuff like that

[chDVRuser]

PBS doesn't use gracenote for their website guide schedules.

Try mapping the guide data to your local PBS station callsign in Channels DVR.
If the gracenote guide data isn't correct, contact your local PBS station and ask them to keep gracenote updated. We mere mortals cannot contact gracenote about guide issues.

[rvc]

I unchecked the mapping and then redid it and now the guide is correct. Hope it holds, this station has been a problem with having the correct guide.

[doug8796]

So what is the best way to get PBS Working ? There are multiple ways?

[babsonnexus]

No, there's one:

Millie / vlc-bridge-pbs · GitLab

There are ways to work with that Docker to get specific PBS stations if your situation requires it, including:

Usage ‐ PLM ‐ PBS Stations

[jsfullam]

Hi all!
I have been having a recurrent problem with errors and VLC-bridge-PBS crashing when recording.

In this particular occurrence, I had two shows scheduled back to back on the same channel. My series pass includes a 30 seconds before and 30 seconds after recording padding, which accounts for a 30 seconds overlap between recordings.

I'm wondering if this is because I haven't limited my source to a single stream, as indicated in this previous post:

@dvrbob

I think I solved my crashing problem, I have three stations available in my area, but unless I limit the streams to one in the source setting, the docker will crash if more than one of the 3 stations has programming to record at the same time. I have not seen a single crash since changing to limit to 1 recording.

If so, would the remedy be to limit the source to a single stream, and/or to remove the overlapping recording padding?

Channels DVR Log, including errors:

2025/09/21 21:30:30.340372 [DVR] Finished job 1758513570-271 California's Gold
2025/09/21 21:30:31.590334 [DVR] Waiting 6h28m58s until next job 1758538770-281 Gunsmoke
2025/09/21 21:30:31.904221 [DVR] Processing file-25771: TV/California's Gold/California's Gold Mule Days 2025-09-21-2059.mpg
2025/09/21 21:30:35.709267 [DVR] Running commercial detection on file 25771 (TV/California's Gold/California's Gold Mule Days 2025-09-21-2059.mpg)
2025/09/21 21:36:14.743730 [DVR] Commercial detection for California's Gold Mule Days 2025-09-21-2059.mpg finished with 6 markers in 5m39s (2 threads).
2025/09/21 21:59:43.941776 [TNR] Closed connection to M3U-PBS for ch18762 KVCR
2025/09/21 21:59:44.620561 [SNR] Buffer statistics for "TV/California's Gold/California's Gold 2012-07-05 Cabrillos Ship 2025-09-21-2129.mpg": buf=0% drop=0%
2025/09/21 21:59:44.624013 [DVR] Job 1758515370-271 California's Gold ended prematurely: 45.375988487s
2025/09/21 21:59:45.359590 [DVR] Starting job 1758515370-271 California's Gold on ch=[18762]
2025/09/21 21:59:45.359652 [DVR] Waiting 5h59m45s until next job 1758538770-281 Gunsmoke
2025/09/21 21:59:45.360219 [ERR] Failed to start stream on channel 18762 via M3U-PBS: M3U: Get "http://192.168.1.100:7777/pbs/watch/d5fc9451-1456-4ea1-9476-4db346756a96": dial tcp 192.168.1.100:7777: connect: connection refused
2025/09/21 21:59:45.413608 [DVR] Error running job 1758515370-271 California's Gold: could not start stream on channels=[18762]: M3U: Get "http://192.168.1.100:7777/pbs/watch/d5fc9451-1456-4ea1-9476-4db346756a96": dial tcp 192.168.1.100:7777: connect: connection refused
2025/09/21 21:59:47.321726 [DVR] Starting job 1758515370-271 California's Gold on ch=[18762]
2025/09/21 21:59:47.321814 [DVR] Waiting 5h59m43s until next job 1758538770-281 Gunsmoke
2025/09/21 21:59:47.322352 [ERR] Failed to start stream on channel 18762 via M3U-PBS: M3U: Get "http://192.168.1.100:7777/pbs/watch/d5fc9451-1456-4ea1-9476-4db346756a96": dial tcp 192.168.1.100:7777: connect: connection refused
2025/09/21 21:59:47.322421 [DVR] Error running job 1758515370-271 California's Gold: could not start stream on channels=[18762]: M3U: Get "http://192.168.1.100:7777/pbs/watch/d5fc9451-1456-4ea1-9476-4db346756a96": dial tcp 192.168.1.100:7777: connect: connection refused
2025/09/21 21:59:49.994789 [DVR] Starting job 1758515370-271 California's Gold on ch=[18762]
2025/09/21 21:59:49.994874 [DVR] Waiting 5h59m40s until next job 1758538770-281 Gunsmoke
2025/09/21 21:59:49.995469 [ERR] Failed to start stream on channel 18762 via M3U-PBS: M3U: Get "http://192.168.1.100:7777/pbs/watch/d5fc9451-1456-4ea1-9476-4db346756a96": dial tcp 192.168.1.100:7777: connect: connection refused
2025/09/21 21:59:49.995551 [DVR] Error running job 1758515370-271 California's Gold: could not start stream on channels=[18762]: M3U: Get "http://192.168.1.100:7777/pbs/watch/d5fc9451-1456-4ea1-9476-4db346756a96": dial tcp 192.168.1.100:7777: connect: connection refused
2025/09/21 21:59:55.157532 [DVR] Starting job 1758515370-271 California's Gold on ch=[18762]
2025/09/21 21:59:55.157627 [DVR] Waiting 5h59m35s until next job 1758538770-281 Gunsmoke
2025/09/21 21:59:55.947826 [TNR] Opened connection to M3U-PBS for ch18762 KVCR
2025/09/21 21:59:55.948035 [DVR] Recording for job 1758515370-271 from M3U-PBS ch18762 into "TV/California's Gold/California's Gold 2012-07-05 Cabrillos Ship 2025-09-21-2129.mpg" for 34.842305744s
2025/09/21 22:00:30.000735 [TNR] Closed connection to M3U-PBS for ch18762 KVCR
2025/09/21 22:00:30.775830 [SNR] Buffer statistics for "TV/California's Gold/California's Gold 2012-07-05 Cabrillos Ship 2025-09-21-2129.mpg": buf=0% drop=0%
2025/09/21 22:00:30.776038 [DVR] Finished job 1758515370-271 California's Gold

This is the VLC-bridge-PBS container log from the same time period:

2025/09/21 20:59:30 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Open url=https://urs-anonymous-detect.pbs.org/redirect/04d8c0ace2ad45b1b31bd7b6a1cde8ef/
2025/09/21 20:59:31 INFO STRM: Manifest successfully parsed (Periods: 1, Streams in first period: 3, Type: live)
2025/09/21 20:59:32 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1001 type=video codec=h264 name=/avc1.640028 esize=59
2025/09/21 20:59:32 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1001 width=1920 height=1080 aspect=1.7777778 fps=60000 fps_scale=2002
2025/09/21 20:59:32 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1002 type=audio codec=aac name=/mp4a.40.2 esize=2
2025/09/21 20:59:32 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1002 channels=2 samplerate=48000 bitrate=128820
2025/09/21 21:59:55 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Open url=https://urs-anonymous-detect.pbs.org/redirect/04d8c0ace2ad45b1b31bd7b6a1cde8ef/
2025/09/21 21:59:56 INFO STRM: Manifest successfully parsed (Periods: 1, Streams in first period: 3, Type: live)
2025/09/21 21:59:58 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1001 type=video codec=h264 name=/avc1.640028 esize=59
2025/09/21 21:59:58 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1001 width=1920 height=1080 aspect=1.7777778 fps=60000 fps_scale=2002
2025/09/21 21:59:58 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1002 type=audio codec=aac name=/mp4a.40.2 esize=2
2025/09/21 21:59:58 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Track id=1002 channels=2 samplerate=48000 bitrate=128820
2025/09/21 22:00:30 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Abort
2025/09/21 22:00:30 ERRO STRM: Instances: 1
2025/09/21 22:00:30 INFO PBS/KVCRDT: Close

[chDVRuser]

I don't know about other users, but I've come to expect the crashes.
I just set the container to restart unless stopped.
The more you use it, the more it crashes.
I'm a light user, one channel only and it's crashed 25 times in the last 10 months (1-4 times per month).

The container log never shows any errors when it crashes. Using your container manager you can find the app exit code which isn't always the same, but nobody will tell you what it means or troubleshoot it. So a waste of time even looking.
https://community.getchannels.com/search?expanded=true&q=crash%20topic:26857%20order:latest

[jsfullam]

@chDVRuser

The more you use it, the more it crashes.

Yeah, I recently set up a pass to record "California's Gold" from one of our three local PBS channels. Some of those programs happen to overlap due to my 30 sec. recording padding. Fortunately, the container recovers quickly and any interruption happens to be at the beginning or the end of a show and doesn't seem to affect watchability.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll add this subject to the "pay no attention and don't waste time on it" list.

[chDVRuser]

PBS and TCM are the only channels I record without padding. They have built in padding in their timeslots.

[GTFan]

Yeah pretty sure that more than one stream will cause a crash so I limit mine to one. None of my shows have padding.

[jsfullam]

@chDVRuser

PBS and TCM are the only channels I record without padding.

@GTFan

Yeah pretty sure that more than one stream will cause a crash

Since I'm not very good at ignoring errors, I have removed padding from all of my PBS series recording passes, and limited my source to a single stream. It will be an interesting experiment to see if this eliminates most of my PBS crashes. 🫣

[wjcarpenter]

@wjcarpenter

I assumed from the name that VLC is in there somewhere, but I don't find it.

I was fooled by the name of this thing. Now that the author has published a few more of these VLC bridge things along with source code, I see that it's mostly just some sophisticated python scripts packed into a monolithic executable. VLC is not any part of it (except that you can use VLC to view the output).

Thanks to the author @miibeez for providing for those other VLC bridges so we can see what's inside.